Around the time the world stopped thinking about the Y2K crisis, I was involved in product design for a digital advertising company in the USA. During this time, we developed a blueprint for what we called the “Digital Signage Exchange”. In a nutshell, the Digital Signage Exchange was like an eBAY for buying, selling and customising advertising on a network of digital plasma screens.

An essential component of the Digital Signage Exchange was the existence of a connected digital signage network. Ultimately, this was a hurdle that AdSpace was unable to overcome at the time, as digital plasma screens were still prohibitively expensive and costly to maintain. The concept had to wait for digital signage technology to become cheaper and smaller, and for connectivity to become faster.

A decade later, Vienna Airport has unveiled their immensely cool video wall installation. The giant wall ushers travellers towards the security area creating a larger than life “mood of anticipation”. The really exciting thing about Vienna Airport’s video wall, however, is that it marks the time that the Digital Signage Exchange has been patiently waiting for: the feasibility of a large scale digital advertising network.

A digital advertising network could represent an interesting new way for airports to generate revenue. Drawing on the concepts of the Digital Signage Exchange, the digital advertising network could be utilised to remotely schedule fully customisable advertisements.

The customisation of advertisements was something that we had successfully implemented at AdSpace back in 2001. The clients’ digital advertisements were able to be remotely configured based on placement criteria. For example, it was possible to tune and schedule an advertisement (from an internet based control panel) to display prices in the local currency or language of the target digital display. This of course could take effect instantly, effectively reducing the roll out time of an advertising campaign to zero.

Since 2003, AdSpace, the company that the Digital Signage Exchange concept was borne at, has morphed into AdSpace Networks. The “Coolsign” technology which we developed to power the signage exchange is owned by Haivision Network Video. Today there are also a few more players in the digital advertising space, however, as far as I know, a large scale Digital Signage Exchange has not yet been rolled out.

With the trend towards new technologies such as OLED, powerful connected video walls, and fully digitised airport terminals, the infrastructure necessary to create an “advertising exchange” is in place. An advertising exchange represents an interesting component which could be leveraged to shape future airport retail… generating revenue while optimising terminal footprint, and concurrently contributing to a personalised passenger experience.

In general, the goals of the various automation and self-service initiatives are to reduce the amount of time, and also space, which is required to process each passenger through the terminal. The time reduction comes from the anticipation that a self-service kiosk, such as automated check-in, will service passengers faster than the equivalent manual process at a staffed counter. The space reduction is expected to stem from both the smaller footprint of the automated kiosk (for example, self-service kiosk takes less space than a staffed counter), and also from the faster passenger throughput (the faster passengers are processed, the less space they require in-terminal).

Thus, the effect of automation on terminal size can be represented as decreasing the value of the two variables SPACE and TIME. Quite interestingly, there has been very little attempt to leverage automation to reduce the third variable, namely PROCESS. Although organisations such as SITA and IATA have made huge inroads into the development of standards in the aviation industry, as yet, these standards are not being used to simplify or unify the various passenger processing steps.

Related to the expansion of in-terminal retail facilities is the associated trend of creating “airport cities” around passenger. The creation of airport cities is the key to solving big urban issues associated with population growth and increased urbanization. From the airport’s perspective, the creation of an “airport city” around the airport increases non-aviation revenue.

As an example, thanks to a well-connected public transport network, Frankfurt Airport attracts many non-travellers to various functions such as concerts and televised sporting events, hosted at the “airport city” centre. Similarly, it is common place for local residents to do their weekend shopping at the shopping mall at Zurich International Airport, largely due to the convenience of access by public transport and the extended shopping hours.

Looking at retail expansion from the perspective of the variables in our equation, it is evident that the effect of this trend will increase the absolute size of the terminal, as of course, expansion of retail increases the value of the variable SPACE. Indirectly, if effective in its desired effect, this trend will also increase the value of the variable TIME (as ideally, people will linger longer at the airport, and also spend more). If we represent the additional retail options for non-travellers as a new “process” in the extended airport environment, then the creation of “airport cities” also has the effect of increasing the PROCESS variable.

From the above evidence, it is clear that the effect of retail expansion increases, rather than decreases, the terminal footprint required to process each additional passenger. This effect is apparent in the context of the various “super terminals” coming on-line in the last few years, for example Dubai International. As an intersting side note, many of the “super terminals” are being constructed to secure a strategic position by the local government and “provide unconstrained growth” to local airlines (Mazhar) with no direct focus or expectations of positive returns on investment.

Net Effect on Terminal Footprint

Taking the two industry trends discussed above, we can conceptually represent their effects on the three variables from our equation as shown in the table below.

We have argued that the effects of automation are to reduce the amount of space and time required to process each passenger. Thus far, there has been no industry wide move to reduce the number of processes associated with each passenger. Similarly, we showed that the effect of retail expansion was to increase the space and time per passenger. The creation of airport cities was reflected as an additional “process” for non-travellers.

It appears plausible that the net effect of the current industry trends is to increase, rather than decrease, the terminal footprint required to process each passenger. This, of course, would result in the construction of larger terminal buildings in response to a growing passenger load – a situation which the industry has claimed is not sustainable.

Sources:

de Neufville, R and A Odoni. 2003. Airport systems: Planning, design and management. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Harrison, A. “A Passenger Oriented Approach to Terminal Design” PhD in process, School of Design, Queensland University of Technology (QUT).